Thursday, May 1, 2008

Hearing aid update

Today I had a mold made for a new, in-the-ear hearing aid. It really is a simple process--you go in, the technician crams lots of sponge down your ear canal (which hurts) and she fills up the rest of your ear with putty which then dries in the shape of your ear. The new hearing aid should be ready in about two weeks.

While I was there, I asked the technician , Rachel, about the Lyric hearing aid (which was featured in a New York Times article forwarded to me by pretty much everyone on the planet). Her response: well, you know how it really hurt when I put the sponge in? And how you whined that it was making the nerves in your jaw go haywire? Well, that is because you had surgery on your ear. And the Lyric is going to go in even further. It will hurt even more!

So, no, I will not be going for the Lyric. :(

As an aside, should one's hearing aid technician be happy that another hearing aid might cause one pain? Does that mean Rachel is a sadist? Should I be concerned? Or do you think that this is simply a little quirk she has and that she is otherwise harmless and would not do anything untoward to my new hearing aid?

She is just honest, this winter we too did have to take the same treat you had, hearing protection from Otoplastics.It just felt uncomfortable and you were forbidden to laugh, no pain at all just tremendous irritation because of silcone in my ears.

Did read this inner ear hearing aid to be some American trend, allthoug "invisible" these things are of less quality than the outer ear systems?

PVDad--will look at your blog. The reason that I might suffer pain is because I underwent surgery on the ear in question. Apparently this affects the shape of the ear. I also have damage to the nerves in my jaw and found that the insertion of the sponge caused the nerves to go haywire.

In short--nothing that is the fault of the sponge (or hearing aid, as the case may be) but particular peculiarities specific to my ears!

I think in some ways it may be the nature of dealing with hearing aids all day. When you work with something constantly, you cannot help but have a more clinical or sometimes casual approach to the products or services you handle than th customer might. Sometimes she just probably forgets that "oh, wow. THAT ONE? That one REALLY hurts." is not perhaps the most sensitive way to express the sentiment to a patient.

I have a friend who is an EMT. She has learned that when the blood drains from our faces and we start to sway a bit - it means that we may not have the same clinical, relatively unemotional fascination with the workings of the human body that she has. But she's a wonderful person. It's just that constant exposure. She can't help it.

I found interesting here in this blog. As we know very well that the sense of hearing is important to all us. Just to know and understand people especially in communication. I think not all hearing aid are good. I just found in consumer advocacy site that they are people give their opinion about hearing aid.

New to My Shrapnel? Start at the beginning:

About Me

Message from the Bombing Victim Muppet

I am, of course, neither sad, nor heroic nor particularly victimized. What I am is an "ordinary Joe" who was seriously injured six years ago in a suicide bombing while waiting for a bus at the Machane Yehuda open air market in Jerusalem.

Ever since I learned how to write, writing has served as a sort of therapy for me. In the months and years after the bombing, I did an enormous amount of writing. What I was thinking. What I was feeling. How the world reacted to me. How my bombed-out self reacted to the world. Some of the articles were sent to friends and relatives via email lists. Many more of them just sat on my computer. I always meant to do something with them.

Of course, I never got around to it.

This year, I promised myself that I would, at last do something. And since blogging is the best way to do something without having to do all that much (no publishers, no rejections, no work apart from editing), I decided that this was the way to go.

Please comment. I am putting these out so that people will read them. Let me know that you are reading.